Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

“In the West, it is said, water flows uphill toward money.”

Water literally flows uphill in the West. One powerful example Reisner discusses is the California clause stipulation in Arizona’s Central Arizona Project (CAP). CAP pumps water up steep hills from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson, but during periods of drought, these two cities will not receive a drop of water from the Colorado. Instead, the water goes to California. Illegal subsidies have already enriched many of the larger farmers in California, whose excess production has depressed nationwide crop prices and whose waste of cheap water creates an expensive environmental problem.

“Americans were making a Procrustean effort to turn half a continent into something they were used to. It was a doomed effort. Even worse, it was unscientific.” 

During the late 1870s, notable politicians, climatologists, and newspaper editors were convincing Americans to settle west of the Mississippi with the idea that “rain follows the plow” (35). This theory was unscientific and false. John Wesley Powell tried to convince the country that the majority of the West experienced climate generally unsuitable to agriculture. Rather than heeding Powell, whose perspective was based on years of studying and traveling throughout the region, politicians and the government continued to encourage and incentivize movement westward. Through irrigation, they tried to turn the desert into a place like the East, where water was far more plentiful. The West is in its current water crisis due to this blindness to reality and science.  

“On top of all this, the Owens was a generous desert river, with a flow sufficient for two million people. It was laughable to think of Los Angeles growing that big, so even under the worst of circumstances there would be water enough for all. The reasoning was very sensible, the logic very sound, and it was fatefully wrong.” 

Mary Austin, Owens Valley’s “literary light,” was the first to recognize that “the valley had died when it sold its first water rights to Los Angeles” (79). The first drought cycle hit California a few years after the aqueduct’s completion. Population in Los Angeles had exploded, and all the agriculture in the San Fernando Valley depended on irrigation. As the drought intensified, William Mulholland fatefully decided the only solution was to “dry the Owens Valley up” (89). Owens Valley ceased to exist as a city with its own destiny. By the mid-1930s, Los Angeles owned 95% and 85% of the farmland and property of the towns, respectively. 

“Like the Red Queen, Los Angeles runs faster and faster to stay in place.” 

Since Owens Valley, Los Angeles constantly seeks new water sources. Between the arrival and the death of William Mulholland, Los Angeles grew from a town of 15,000 into the most populated desert city in the world. Today, it ranks second to Cairo in terms of population. Population and agriculture continue to expand, forcing the city to always be on the lookout for water. In essence, the city is the Red Queen, because no matter how fast it runs, it is never able to overcome its water crisis. Simply put, it cannot run fast enough (i.e., slow population increases, make agriculture more sustainable, etc.) to reach a place where it has a sustainable water source.

“When archaeologists from some other planet sift through the bleached bones of our civilization, they may well conclude that our temples were dams.” 

As Reisner notes, during the 20th century, the United States built a quarter of a million dams. The majority are “earthen plugs thrown across freshets and small creeks to water stock or raise bass” (104), but several thousand are still major dams. These dams comprise massive amounts of concrete, reach heights of 60 stories, and are four miles in length. Their existence will outlast that of humans. Future archaeologists will wonder if the civilization responsible for their construction overreached itself in its own arrogance to control nature.

“When they finally saw the light, however, their attitude miraculously changed—though the myth didn’t—and the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.” 

Through the late 1800s, Western congressman and senators resisted the federal government’s involvement with reclamation projects. They realized, however, that to resist federal reclamation projects (and the capital and revenue that came with these projects) would impede further migration to the West and negatively impact the current settlers’ livelihoods. Dams created jobs. Water subsidies made farmers happy. Water from the dams made cities happy. All of this meant reelection for politicians, making them happy. None of this is possible without large subsidies from taxpayers; thus, the country at large suffers. Hence, Reisner strongly argues that the American West is a “modern welfare state” (111).

“If the Colorado River suddenly stopped flowing, you would have four years of carryover capacity in the reservoirs before you had to evacuate most of southern California and Arizona and a good portion of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.” 

This passage reinforces one of Reisner’s central arguments: The American West’s water supply is precarious. Until recently, running out of water was not a concern for residents and politicians from this region because they believed there were always water sources to divert. This notion is no longer a reality, due to cost, loss of America’s appetite for water development projects and subsidizing large portions of the West, and the fact that there are few untouched rivers left. The West is in a serious situation. The amount of water it removes from rivers and the ground is not sustainable. If something catastrophic happens to these sources, such as if the Colorado stops flowing, millions of people and businesses will be at risk. Living in a desert will no longer be tenable.  

“One could almost say, then, that the history of the Colorado River contains a metaphor for our time. One could say that the age of great expectations was inaugurated at Hoover Dam—a fifty-year flowering of hopes when all things appeared possible. And one could say that, amid the salt-encrusted sands of the river’s dried-up delta, we began to founder on the Era of Limits.” 

The “go-go years” of big water projects took place during the 1930s-1960s. The 1930s, in particular, were the glory days for dam construction. Reisner notes that “no dam after Hoover has ever quite matched its grace and glorious detail” (159). Hoover demonstrated to the country and world that the United States was still capable of great things, even as it recovered from economic turmoil. By the 1960s, all the good sites for dams were gone. The Bureau was forced to build dams on geologically unstable locations, resulting in several experiencing (or nearly experiencing) catastrophic failure. As the climate changed, further impacting communities and the environment, it reinforced the reality that we had overreached ourselves in the arid West. We built a civilization where one should not have. 

“The Bureau had presented Congress with a fait accompli in the form of a gigantic foundation designed to support a gravity dam 550 feet tall. To build a two-hundred-foot dam on it would have been like mounting a Honda body on the chassis of a truck.” 

This passage illustrates how politics and money guided water projects rather than good sense. Congress allotted money for a low dam at Grand Coulee largely because of the costs at a time when funding needed to go to relief projects for the country. However, the Bureau and FDR wanted a high dam to help irrigate the valley and produce surplus hydroelectricity (the latter would subsidize the water costs for farmers). The Bureau, possibly with FDR’s blessing, built the foundation for a high dam. This deceit forced Congress to allot additional funding to continue the dam’s construction. The high dam ultimately destroyed one of the greatest salmon spawning runs in the world. 

“Water projects came to epitomize the pork barrel; they were the oil can that lubricated the nation’s legislative machinery.” 

To Reisner, one main legacy of the go-go years was the corruption of national politics. Members of Congress quickly realized the value of writing omnibus bills that would include legislation on education, foreign aid, and pet water projects. Because of this system, presidents could not simply veto the water projects (even if they did not like them) without vetoing the whole bill. FDR set this trend with his public works programs, and Congress soon followed him.  

“As a result, the business of water development was to become a game of chess between two ferociously competitive bureaucracies, on a board that was half a continent plus Alaska, where rivers were the pawns and dams the knights and queens used to checkmate the other’s ambition.” 

Chapter 6 details the extensive back and forth between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers around the development of water projects. The Corps employed marginally legal (and often illegal) tactics against the Bureau to prevent the agency from building dams in locations that it desired and vice versa. Often both agencies would simply build dams to prevent the other from doing so, regardless of the economic and environmental costs. Rivers were used as pawns. There is great irony in this competition. It occurred during a time when the government funded large-scale projects. Both agencies had pet projects they wanted to build. However, their competition resulted in them being focused more on who built more dams, rather than on the quality of the projects. If the two agencies had worked together, they likely could have built their pet projects. Now, there is no money or desire to build these projects.

“The Bureau of Reclamation was a good thing, but the Corps—the Corps of Engineers was a dream come true.” 

The Corps of Engineers, in contrast to the Bureau of Reclamation, was unencumbered by the Reclamation Act. Because of this, the Bureau was fearful of cracking down on giant California farming corporations and the politicians they elected for violating the land agreements. If it was too forceful, these groups would turn to the Corps, resulting in the Corps becoming the major water developer in the region. This almost happened several times. California growers participated in campaigns to try and repeal all constraining features of the Reclamation Act. These campaigns ultimately failed, but they fueled the Bureau’s paranoia.

“The Bureau is a creature of Congress, and most Presidents have not been able to control it any better than they could control the weather or the press.” 

Because the Bureau of Reclamation is part of the Interior Department, the Commissioner is directly responsible to the Interior Secretary and the President. In theory, the Bureau should carry out the wishes of the White House administration, but it often follows Congress’s wishes and whims. Carter, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford all attempted to reign in the Bureau and failed in almost all cases. Congress would add the water projects into omnibus public works bills. If the President wanted to veto the water project, he would have to veto the whole bill, which included important legislation.  

“By the mid-1960s, nearly 90 percent of the valley’s wetlands habitat was gone, almost entirely because of irrigation farming, and wetlands were by far the most important natural feature in all its five-hundred-mile length; the valley was once the winter destination of a hundred million waterfowl cruising the Pacific Flyway, and now their numbers were reduced to five or six million, jammed onto refuges or forced to scrounge a meal in unwelcoming farmers’ fields.” 

This passage illustrates one of Reisner’s main tenets in the book: The transformation of the desert through water projects severely damaged the environment. This example at Topock Marsh is ironic. The Bureau, led by Commissioner Dominy, dredged the marsh due to the grasses and duckweed that were consuming the water. They were taking water from farmers in the Imperial Valley, yet these same farmers had so much water, they were applying up to 12 feet per year to the crops. The marsh’s destruction was senseless.

“What began as an Olympian division of one river’s waters emerged, after fifty years of brokering, tinkering, and fine-tuning according to the dictates of political reality, as an ultimate testament to the West’s cardinal law: that water flows towards power and money.” 

For decades, Arizona lobbied Congress to build the Central Arizona Project. California repeatedly stalled the project because it wanted priority access to CAP water during droughts, a demand Arizona originally baulked at. Eventually, Arizona gave in, and CAP was built. However, this clause will likely haunt Arizona. The Colorado River basin is facing prolonged, possibly permanent, periods of drought. The water that Arizona worked so hard to get will likely all go to California. The power and money behind California’s water lobbies are illustrated through this example.

“‘Contracts were made to be broken.’ There, in a simple phrase, was perhaps the worst legacy of the Bureau of Reclamation’s eighty years as the indulgent godfather of the arid West.” 

Through the Bureau’s subsidies of water in the West, many farmers now expect cheap water to be their right. They believe if they cannot afford the water, then the Bureau, and really the taxpayers, will subsidize the water even more for them. To Reisner, Western farmers have come to embody the very notion they loathe: a welfare state. 

“Congress had made a mockery of one of its own laws, and even an amendment weakening that law, for the sake of a water project so bad it made better sense to abandon than to finish it.”

In this passage, Reisner is referring to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Tellico Dam area was home to an endangered fish. Under this act, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) should have stopped construction. However, instead, it tried to move the fish to another area of the river. The Environmental Defense Fund took the TVA to court and won. This caused members of Congress who supported the dam to begin introducing and passing legislation to weaken the Endangered Species Act. This action was even more problematic considering that the Tellico Dam should not have been built. Seeking to satisfy a few members of Congress, the institution as a whole embarrassed itself in the process.

“Thirty-one million people (more than the population of Canada), an economy richer than all but seven nations’ in the world, one third of the table food grown in the United States—and none of it remotely conceivable within the preexisting natural order.” 

Throughout the text, Reisner points out that California is frequently thought of as a lush and abundant land. In reality, it is mainly arid desert that, without human intervention, is incapable of sustaining life. Despite this reality, the state has grown to be one of the most populous desert civilizations in the world. Its economy, primarily dependent on growing non-native crops, is one of the richest. The wealth and prestige rest on a resource that is scarce, begging the question of how California might be impacted if the water crisis continues to worsen.

“It was the same old story again. The big farmers had managed to get something (a lot of water) for next to nothing.” 

Reisner provides numerous examples throughout the book of city-fathers, especially in Los Angeles, stirring up fear in their constituents over a looming water crisis. This fear was used to get the urban areas to vote in favor of a water project. The hidden reality was that the majority of the water would not be going to cities. Rather, it would be going to farmers. It cost farmers almost nothing, yet the urban areas paid the taxes and interest on the projects. For farmers, this water was not critical. They used it as surplus to continue to expand their fields and profits.

“The West and the Congress wanted more projects, and the Bureau wanted more work, but the good damsites were gone.” 

One of the most astounding points in Chapter 11 is that the Bureau continued to build dams even if the sites were geologically unstable. The Bureau, Congress, and members of the public in the West ignored evidence supporting the dangers associated with many of the construction sites. Even after dams experienced catastrophic or near catastrophic failures, there was still demand for dam projects. Through this chapter, Reisner drives home the argument that we do not have control over nature, even if we think we do. 

“Although the amount of water diverted would not be much—for a dam of such size and cost, it would be pathetic—its absence would be sorely felt by the waterfowl. On top of this, the concentration of fertilizers, pesticides, and sewage—Denver’s and Fort Collins’s—in the river would become worse.” 

This passage highlights the negative ecological impacts of dam building. The South Platte River was home to diverse waterfowl. The river was already polluted, and water levels were critically low. Rather than improving the ecological condition of the river and waterfowl habitat, as some tried to argue, the dam worsened its condition.

“The opportunity for economic stability offered by the world’s largest aquifer, however, was squandered for immediate gain. The only inference one can draw is that the states felt confident than when they ran out of water, the rest of the country would be willing to rescue them.” 

If groundwater pumping had been regulated, the Ogallala Aquifer should have lasted several centuries. Instead, by 1975, farmers in Texas were withdrawing 11 billion gallons of groundwater per day. Overnight, one of the poorest farming regions in the country transformed into one of the wealthiest. However, the region’s success is based on a nonrenewable resource. Farmers and politicians understood that this water was from a nonrenewable source. Thus, they must have felt confident that taxpayers would rescue them when the water ran out. There are few other reasons that explain this gluttonous and irresponsible water usage.

“What federal water development has amounted to, in the end, is a uniquely productive, creative vandalism.”

Through our desire to civilize deserts via federal water development projects, we have destroyed almost all free-flowing rivers in the West, caused wetlands and other diverse habitats to disappear, and ruined great salmon runs. The Corps of Engineers alone has converted more than 25 million acres of marshy or flood-threatened land into permanent crops. We have vandalized our economic future and our natural heritage. To Reisner, this is a blight on the planet.